


making the most of an indestructible sensation

by greyjoying



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Coming Out, Emetophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Not a fix it fic cause Stan's still dead, what its like being gay and 40 and you are repressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 16:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20763188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyjoying/pseuds/greyjoying
Summary: The first thing Richie did on the way to the airport was remember he was gay. The second was proceed to throw up the contents of his stomach all over the vaguely grotty carpet on the cab he was in.





	making the most of an indestructible sensation

The first thing Richie did on the way to the airport was remember he was gay. The second was proceed to throw up the contents of his stomach all over the vaguely grotty carpet on the cab he was in.

He had been handling things fine up to then, or about as fine as he could. He had called his manager, and then his assistant, and if his hand was shaking a little - to the point it had taken him three tries to hit the right name in his contacts, So what? He was speaking with the light airy confident voice he always used on the phone, the kind that said _“I’m alright and a completely competent adult and know exactly what I’m doing,” _ which was about the opposite of what he always felt. Especially now. What with the panic attack, and all that.

It’s not like - it wasn’t suddenly like, “Oh Shit, I’m gay!” Like he’d forgotten his keys. It was a slow and dark descent, the kind where his mind sometimes wanted to wander down and he would always stop right at the top step. Like, hey it’s weird you don’t remember much from your childhood, huh? Just snatches of memories, snapshots. The way the concrete in the summer got so hot it would burn you if you sat on it for too long, ice cream already starting to run down your hands. The way the water in the quarry tasted when you accidentally got a mouthful of it, and it burned your throat a little. The sudden shocking panic of when you took the wrong turn on your bike and found yourself face to face with some awful bully whose name was just on the tip of Richie’s tongue now. Harry?

More names were coming now, and faces too, but impossible to match to each other. Bev? with the shock of bright red hair. Stan and his birds. A boy with a cast. A screech of bike tires. Someone screaming. A dark, deserted house, dust swirling and settling on his glasses, and down deeper and somewhere under the horror and the silence and the stillness into the sewers where it - or where _ It _, even -

Richie’s stomach flipped and his eyes watered and he had to bite his tongue then to keep the acid in the back of his throat from escaping. Desperately he tried to cling to the memory of anything that wasn’t the sewers, and his brain landed on his friend, the boy with the cast, the inhaler, the ice cream, the one who rolled his eyes and said _ Nice Going Asshole _ and once kicked him down the stairs by accident during a tussle over an X-men comic, and who made Richie’s heart stutter when he said his name, and who Richie could swear must feel the sweat on his palms when their hands almost touched, his pulse humming like a hummingbird, and he was sure everyone in the room could hear the blood swirling round his heart.

The sudden vivid nature of the memories were so bright they burned him, like the hot concrete or the water in his lungs.

Suddenly things were horrifically sliding into place. A thousand grey days of taking women on lackluster dates and pretending to himself he was sad when they eventually left him and dull sex and going on stage and saying shit like _ “my girlfriend’s a real bitch!” _ in front of a crowd were suddenly contrasted by the sickly red of his best friend’s shorts and the way their knees knocked together in the hammock. The quick, furtive, guilt stained jerk offs he’d had over the years while a selection of random hot famous men flicked through his mind suddenly felt more sharper, more pronounced, suddenly significant and defined against the dull blur of the hookups he had with women, which had started to become few and far between.

Richie’s stomach swerved again, and he managed to get out a halfhearted groan before he bent over and vomited on the floor of the taxi.

The cab driver, who must be used to famous people vomiting on the floor of his car, gave him a tired, bored look from the rear view mirror.

“Sorry,” Richie mumbled, the back of his throat still burning “I just remembered I was gay.”

Dully, he realized how stupid that must have sounded. There was no way this could possibly make sense to the cab driver. Hell, it barely made sense to Richie, but his mouth had already said it and now he was pulling out cash and doubling the amount to hand to toss halfheartedly at the driver’s window as a pitiful apology, and then he was pulling himself out the cab door and into the sunlight, the horrible blinding kind that bounced off the glass buildings and made the streets feel like an oven.

The throwing up thing - it wasn’t like, he was disgusted by being gay. Or like, conversion therapy or self hating or anything, Jesus Christ. It was just a surprise. Someone could have told him before. He felt like a doll with a string that was programmed to say all the right lines about fucking girls and fucking your mom and eating pussy and it was all a horrific lie and he couldn’t even open his mouth because they were just plastic, sealed shut.

All he did was say shit for other people.

Hell, he didn’t even write his own jokes. His prime talent in life was saying other people’s words. Could he just for once feel like a real person. What the fuck did real people even do anyway? Probably not forget they were gay and then have a sexuality crisis about it at the age of 40, that’s for sure. Probably also didn’t have to get on a plane and go fight a killer clown. 

_ Oh God, the Clown. _ He thought, and then his brain tried to pull him back from the memory, back into the light, just like how he and his friends had climbed out from that dilapidated house and into the safe summer sunshine once more.

He spent the time before boarding hurriedly scrolling through Facebook to try and find his old friends. If they were on Facebook, they all must have had privated to fuck accounts, or maybe they didn’t bother with that shit at all. He couldn’t quite picture Stan ever even using a computer, and Mike had called him, hadn’t he? Though what else should he have done, Richie supposed. It’s not like you could Facebook Poke someone back into remembering their childhood trauma. That just wouldn’t be right. Richie shoved his boarding pass into his mouth,clutching it between his teeth, and opened a new tab, resorting to Google. This worked almost too well. Ben had some fancy company site for architecture, using all sorts of terms Richie barely grasped._ (What the hell were neodynamic urban spacial areas?) _ And Bev had her own fashion line. Good for her. Bill was - Oh for fuck’s sake. Bill was the horror writer he ‘d seen advertised at Barnes and Noble every year. How could Richie have missed him. (Only the boards had said William, and Richie didn’t know William, just Bill, Big Bill. With the silver bike and somber eyes that he always hid under his fringe, especially after Georgie had-

Oh, fuck. Georgie.

It was a long flight to Maine.

It was weirdly easy not to think about the gay thing until the second he saw Eddie again, and then it was impossible. Time had played a joke on Richie making him slightly balding and giving him a beer belly and meanwhile here was Eddie with sharp jaw and same dark eyes and same smile that he only did when he managed to bite back at Richie’s snarking with his own. Maybe Eddie should have been the comedian, Richie idly thought as he downed another pint of shitty beer.

The light in the room was low, or maybe the alcohol was starting to wear at the edges of his eyes, giving the room a weird fuzzy quality. It was almost too easy to zone out and listen to his friends banter as if no time at all had passed. He was suddenly snapped out of it by Bev on his right leaning over to talk to Eddie.

‘‘You got married, Eddie?’‘

Richie hoped the smile he was forcing himself to wear looked even remotely the right shape. He opened his mouth to say something like, ‘’Oh, I hope you’re happy.’’ or ‘’Wow, good for you!’’ or even ‘’I’ve been desperately in love with you since we were kids, but great job getting hitched.’’

Instead he said: ‘’to a woman?’’ and the whole table laughed. 

Sometimes, Richie really fucking hated himself.

The soft, kind laughter of his friends rang in his ears, and Bev’s hand ghosted his back as she leaned forward, giggling beside him. The familiarity of it was comforting at least, as Richie downed his next drink so fast his eyes stung, and then rattled off something stupid about Eddie’s mom.

(Surely they can tell, they can all tell. You’re so fucking lazy now, why even bother to hide it? It’s not like the _ Losers Club _ would be fucking homophobes.) At least, he didn’t think so. Bev obviously wouldn’t, Mike or Ben neither. And Stan -

Stan was -

“Wait, where the fuck is Stan?’‘

Time started to move horrifically fast again after that.

Richie had tried to leave, but now for some reason was lying fully clothed on his bed in the Inn. Weird how things turn out like that. One minute you’re trying to get signal to book a flight back and then you’re friend is telling you she saw you die, you’re all going to die, and you’re best friend is already dead.

The light on the ceiling gave a low buzz, and flickered out.

This was stupid. This was stupid. He was lying in the dark now with the world’s shittiest WiFi, because of course Derry, the center of Hell wouldn’t have good coverage, and instead of thinking about the fact he had to kill a weird alien clown he was googling shit like

How to come out

How to come out as gay when you are 40

How to come out as gay when you are 40 and you forgot you were gay

How to come out as gay when you can’t even think saying the word gay without being sick

Childhood trauma?

Hate crimes derry

Homophobia derry

Songs for when you are in love with your best friend

Songs for when you are in love with your best friend and you’re 40

Who is lorde

The worst thing was he wanted to call Stan. It almost made Richie laugh until he broke. He didn’t even know the guy had existed until a day ago and now there was a near constant itch to pick up a phone and hear his voice. Richie tried to imagine calling adult Stan. Richie even imagined calling 12 year old Stan. He would still probably be more helpful than Richie was to himself, lying in the dark all self pitying. His leg had fallen asleep, and he tried moving it in small circles, willing it back to life. Being old sucked.

Below, he heard voices, bodies moving. Someone clinking a glass. A burst of nervous laughter from Bev.

This shouldn’t be this hard. _ Just go downstairs and open your Trashmouth and say “Hey Besties guess what? You know how I wouldn’t stop talking about hot girls and tits and wanting to fuck milfs when we were younger? Well turns out it was a whole massive joke. I’m actually the massive joke. Haha, classic Richie.” _ Maybe he didn’t have to say anything. Maybe they already knew, and could see right through him, see the way he stiffened when Mike mentioned one of Penny- It’s appearances had been when a gay couple got hatecrimed. Richie had tried to not look at anyone’s face, and instead his eyes had landed on the article. For some reason the ink had smudged on the word ‘inhaler’, and it made Richie feel a weird kind of breathless sick until he dragged his eyes away from it. Made him feel like how he felt as a kid again.

He had been so careful, he remembers now. About touching the others, about making sure he wasn’t staring too long, about sleeping on the floor so he wasn’t the one sharing the bed at sleepovers. And none of it had mattered because the clown thing had known all along. He had spent those years almost breathless with disbelief at the fact no one could see it written across his face, clear as day, and in the end it hadn’t fucking mattered, because the clown knew anyway and so had Henry fucking Bowers, and his cousin who wasn’t even that cute.

How dare they. How fucking dare they take that from him, tell him what he was when he couldn’t even tell himself, or his friends, or _Eddie. _ Richie was suddenly full of red hot rage, seeing his memories through a weird fucked up kaleidoscope where he wasn’t him, but looking at himself. Just a 13 year old kid trying to get by. But Henry bowers ate thirteen year olds for breakfast and the clown ate them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Richie’s chest hurt, but he didn’t trust himself to sit up in case the dizziness got to him.

Downstairs the soft hum of his friends was the only calming consistency. He couldn’t hear what they were saying but he could make out their voices. Bill’s impassioned pleas, Bev’s quiet, sad half-sobs. Ben’s soft murmurs of agreement. Mike’s reassurances. And even Eddie’s slightly strained voice.

Richie stared up at the ceiling, admiring the crack that ran across it, splitting the weird vintage bird pattern in two.

He typed in a number he knew by muscle memory now, despite it being about 25 years since he has last called it, and ignored the robotic voice at the other end saying the number was disconnected. “Hey, Stan. Remembered your number. Remember that time your dad was so mad at you after your Bar Mitzvah he didn’t let me talk to you for a week? Even though it hadn’t been my idea at all, and I didn’t even know you were gonna do that. You were pretty cool back then, dude. Anyway. I wanted to tell you. I mean - you should be the first to know. And maybe you even knew back then and just didn’t say because you knew I’d be too stupid to handle it but. I’m gay. Okay. That’s it. Love you. Have fun looking at those birds and shit, Boy Scout.”

Richie hung up and then sat in the dark for a little while longer, until his cheeks felt dry enough again.

…..

Somehow, impossibly, the next day was even worse. Sure, he had the token, and he’d survived being serenaded about being gay by a weird clown, but the whole thing made him feel rotten, almost - dirty. Like the clown had said. His only relief was when he caught Eddie’s eye and saw the same face of surrender on it, as if they had all just accepted the horror they lived in now. At least it seemed like not a single one of his friends was having a good day, either.

Then they were in the sewers, again. Richie was feeling sick almost constantly now, like his anxiety was working his way up his stomach into his mouth. Something about being so close to It again was making everything more vivid. He could see the fear on his friends faces, and it almost like it was a palpable thing, a blanket covering them all and making him drenched in his own sweat. At once point in the darkness the flashlight had flickered a little too fast, and he had reached out to mike to grab his hand like a child again, clutching at the ends of his coat for comfort.

Richie tossed his token in with a dismissive, almost apologetic tone that he hated himself for. He could have said something like “this is from that time I Henry bowers called me a fag and I think it was the first time in my life that my mouth stopped working.” For fucks sake, Bill was clutching his dead brother’s boat to his chest, almost crumpling it, and Ben and Bev were basically five seconds away from confessing their love via beloved item. He kind of resented the fact no one even bothered to ask, just a little. But maybe in the end they knew there was something wrong with him they couldn’t quite touch, and they thought if they pressed him he would collapse in on himself, or blow up at them or something, in some ways Richie craved that, because then it would mean something that happened, something he had done in the past 27 years of his life could finally mean something. But they didn’t say anything and he didn’t say anything, just stood there watching the embers as Eddie bitched about melting points.

Eddie, thank god, pulled out his inhaler. Richie has wanted to rip it out his hands the moment he had saw it, but knew this wouldn’t be helpful. Even if he was desperate to, desperate to smash it to pieces and say fuck your mother, not in the fun sexy way, but really fuck her for what she did to you. Still, Eddie clung to it a little before letting it go, and Richie could see the slight loss in his eyes and sag of his shoulders as he dropped it in. Eddie was making a promise to himself, to the, that he didn’t need it anymore. A promise to not be afraid. Richie wished he could have done that. That was the thing about Eddie, he had the most to be afraid of and yet stood toe to toe with all of them. Richie was a pussy compared to Eddie, his problems so minuscule they could be summed up as a fucking arcade token.

And even later

“You really think I’m brave?” Eddie had asked, and now god it wasn’t the time, but he’d asked it so softly Richie couldn’t help himself but stop, still breathing heavy from running from that demon dog and say “Yeah, dude. Bravest person I know.”

Eddie grinned, his hand still perplexingly wrapped round Richie's wrist. “Coming from you. When we were teens and you swung that bat at it…you know I thought you were the coolest person in the world for that right? Like one of the only things I could remember at first was you swinging that bat at it.”

Richie tried to silence the teenage him that was dying at Eddie calling him the coolest person in the world, which was hard cause he was being pretty fucking loud in Richie’s head.

“You really need to get a better role model. I mean me? Come on. You have no idea how much of a coward I actually am”

Eddie frowned, opened his mouth to say more, but his eyes darted behind him and then widened in horror and then -

A lot of screaming, and darkness. Spider legs? Richie pulling Eddie by the hand through the darkness. Richie saying something something sloppy bitch. Richie seeing white and a piercing hum and then a thousand moments playing in reverse and over lapping.

And then he was awake.

“Rich, did you see that? I got it!” Eddie, exuberant, beaming above him, somehow 13 year old him and the 40 year old risk assessor at once. Something about it made Richie want to run his hands down his shirt to check it wasn’t a Hawaiian one with the buttons.

And then - Eddie screaming. Eddie on the ground. So much blood, almost as much as in Bev’s bathroom that one time, and then Mike’s hands were on top of his, pressing down to haunt the river of blood coming out of him.

“Eddie, Eds, Ed, come on come on come on, don’t die on me now, _ not now _”

And then for one horrible moment he saw Eddies eyes roll back and thought _“oh god this is it, he’s going to die and he’s still so warm and his blood is soaking through my skin and -” _

And then Eddie jerked up, gasping. Richie was gasping too, not realizing how long he’d been holding his breath for. Eddie looked wildly around them, his eyes unfocused, and then they landed on Richie.

Richie opened his mouth to say - he didn’t know, anything. A million things. _ (I love you. Holy shit you’re not dead and I love you) _

But Eddie got there first.

“Stan.”

Richie, star comedian and smart mouth managed to look at his best almost dead friend and say: “Huh?” Like a moron.

“Stan was there.” Eddie coughed again, and Richie could almost hear him wheeze. Fucking inhaler. He felt Eddie’s hand slip into his own.“He said to tell you to stop being a pussy.”

It wasn’t even funny, but Richie threw his head back and laughed and laughed.

The clown died, by the way. It should have been something maybe Richie remembered more, but time was feeling weird then, each moment rushing into the other and blurring, like a strobe light was going and he could no longer connect what he was seeing. At one point as he was leaving with Eddie half on him and half draped across Ben the light from outside finally greeted them, and for a moment glancing back at his friends he almost saw them as kids again, how they looked the last time they had made it out of that disgusting house.

But it had just been the light, nothing more nothing less, and then the birds were singing. (Did birds sing this late in the afternoon? Stan would know. or maybe not. Maybe Stan had stopped giving a shit about birds.)

Richie glanced at Eddie, and his brain said in Stan’s voice “Stop being a pussy.”

He put a hand on Bev’s shoulder and then pulled away from the others, heading over to where Eddie was sitting, Clutching his sides.

“Mike called an ambulance.”

“Cool. What the fuck are we going to say to them? Like we were paranormal investigators or some shit? This is stupid.”

Despite almost dying, something about Eddie seemed more alive than before. The fire from back when he was a kid seemed more present now.

Richie watched him valiantly try to pick at a stain of his own blood on his jacket.

“I gotta call my wife.”

Richie tried not to feel sick. “Oh.”

Eddie saw the look on his face. “And ask for a divorce. I can’t keep being with her. Not after all this. It sure as shit isn’t fair to her, or to me.”

This…hadn’t been what Richie expected. But Eddie had burned the inhaler and thrown himself at a giant evil spider thing, and now he was alive so fuck it. It’s not like Richie was going to tell him not to divorce his wife, who sounded by all accounts horrible.

‘’I mean I get it, and I’m happy for you, but you wanna do it now, man? You almost just died.

“Yeah, exactly. I almost died and I’m not dead. I feel like, fuck. I don’t know. Like I can do whatever now. I’m basically living on extra time. I don’t wanna go one more second living some shitty life that got picked out for me by fate or whatever.”

God, if there ever was a moment. But there had been a million moments he could have said something, and he’d let them all pass. The birds sang louder suddenly, Irritated. Fuck, Stan.

Richie sighed. Tried to ignore the way his hands felt slick with sweat in his pockets. Clenched his hands and then unclenched them. “That’s pretty inspiring. I’ve been in love with you since we were kids.” He managed to say it, somehow, in just about the most dead tone he could imagine. He’d had to say it like he was barely thinking it, before his brain could register the thought and inject the terror in.

Eddie froze, eyebrows pulling together and mouth twisting down to form a frown. “What the fuck kind of joke was that? Are you shellshocked or something?’”

Oh god, his brain was realizing now. Terror was setting in, his heart rate spiking, something sick and panicky working its way through his chest. “It’s not a joke, dude. It’s real. I couldn’t say before because I’m a fucking - a fucking coward.” He could have said more, but the weird sick way he always felt was finally making it’s way into his voice, and every second word came out with a kind of joked urgency he didn’t know he was capable of.

Eddie was staring at him, and out of all the expressions Richie remembered he was sure he’d never seen this one.

There was a long, horrific pause. Richie almost wished the birds would shut up. He felt like he was two seconds from vomiting his heart onto the dead grass.

Eddie scratched his neck. Then he bit his lip, like he used to do when he was a kid and needed to think about a math equation real hard. And then, like it was the simplest thing in the world, he said:

“Fuck it. If I don’t die of blood loss let’s date. How long does the ambulance take? It’s meant to be seven minutes for emergencies”

Now Richie was staring at him. “What did you say?”

But suddenly the ambulance was there, and Ben was helping Eddie to it, and Bev had her arms round Richie and Bill’s head was on his shoulder and Mike’s firm hand was on his back. Bev was crying, softly. “I’m so glad we made it out. Oh Richie, I’m so glad he’s alright.”

And Richie was left, standing in the warm huddle of his best friends, staring into space, and asking himself. “What the fuck?”

Eddie was in the hospital for what felt like a million years while they ran tests and Miike called a dozen people to attempt to explain a version of events even vaguely resembling something normal. Bev, Ben, Bill and Richie sat in the waiting room, with Bev’s knees pulled under her and her head on Richie’s shoulder. At one point Bill left to call his wife, _ ( Alice??? Or whatever) _ and Ben went to get everyone some food and maybe some clothes that didn’t smell like sewer. Then it was just him and Bev in a deserted hallway with the bright, impersonal lights reflecting off the linoleum floor.

Richie nudged Bev, checking to see if she was awake. She was, even if her face was stained with dried tears and mascara. “So…you and Ben?” Bev gave a small, shy smile. “I think so. I know I didn’t say anything but…my husband was a bad man. I missed Ben so much, and I couldn’t even remember him.”

Richie folded his arms into hers and tangled their legs, like they did when they were kids. “That’s like how I feel about Eddie, like something was missing and then it all came rushing back.”

Bev looked at him, eyes bright as her hair. “You and Eddie, like…?”

Richie smiled, a real smile, the first time he felt like he had in days.

“Yeah. I’m crazy about him. How did you not notice?”

Bev thought for a moment, then giggled. “It did sometimes seem like if he had pigtails you would have pulled them.”

And then she put her head back on his shoulder and went to sleep. There. No huge momentous change. No dramatic gasp even. Huh. Guess that’s what coming out felt like. “Well, what were you expecting?” Asked the Stan who lived in Richie’s head now.

And then everyone slowly drifted back together, and after another horrible hour, a nurse he was pretty sure had worked with his Mom when he was 14 appeared to usher them into Eddie’s hospital room.

Richie bounced in the room to see Eddie awake, and then stopped at the door, almost Shy. He’s tried to stop himself overanalysing what Eddie had said the past few hours, mostly cause part of him didn’t believe what Eddie had said was real. More likely he really Had been suffering from some kind of weird blood loss or head injury that made you go crazy and think you could date your gay childhood best friend. There was no reality where Richie came out of this winning. And yet. And yet…hope killed the cat,

Or whatever, but fuck it.

Richie hung back and let Mike hug Eddie and Bill ruffle his hair, and Ben look at the doctor’s clipboard charts like they actually meant anything. Bev kissed Eddie’s cheek, and then her eyes darted to Richie conspiratorially. ‘”Come on, guys. Let’s give Eddie some peace.’’ She looped her arms through Mike’s and Ben’s, and steered them and Bill out the door, shooting a wink at Richie as they passed. Richie had no idea how she’d managed to get them all out of there without asking anything, but then again Bev was Bev, and could just do shit like that.

Eddie was grinning at him. “What’s up, fucker?”

Richie shoved his hands in his pockets and tried not to look at the array of bandages covering Eddie, almost like he was a Halloween mummy, like the kind Ben had been scared of when they were younger.

“I’m good. Glad to see you didn’t die. Ben told me you complained to the paramedic all the way here.”

Eddie snorted. “Asshole didn’t know how to do the proper procedure for anything. I swear to god they don’t teach anyone anything in this backwards ass town. The sooner we get out of here the better.’’

_ Don’toverthinkitdontovethinkit _

“We?”

Eddie raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah dude, didn’t we agree to date? Or was that, just a while I was dying thing?”

For the second time in his life, Richie Tozier was speechless.

“I. But you. Wife?”

“Which. I’m. Divorcing. Do you keep anything in that brain of yours or is it all wasted on remembering shitty jokes you didn’t write about your girlfriends, who are fake, I’m guessing?”

Richie sat down on the end of his bed.

“Ed’s.”

“Don’t.”

“Eddie. You don’t have to agree to this just cause you almost died and are feeling impulsive and feel bad I had a pathetic crush on you. Like, really.”

Eddie scoffed.

“Up until this point the only relationship I had was with a women who subconsciously reminded me of my awful mother. I think being gay for you is about a thousand times more normal than that, Rich.”

Well, Richie couldn’t argue with that.

Eddie poked him in the chest.

“Also, I remember stuff too. You think the hammock shit was a one-man tango? I could have got out any time I wanted to. I didn’t even like it, I was always freaked it was about to crash in on itself, and then you’d just fucking come and sit in it! Basically on top of me! There’s a reason only you got away with that.”

Richie moved before thinking, his hand squeezing Eddie’s cheek.

“Ow, atthole. I cwant talk like ‘his ”

“Am I fucking dreaming?”

Eddie shoved him back, rubbing his cheek. “Get off me, I’m injured remember? And you’re meant to pinch your own cheek if it’s a dream”

“But I wanted to pinch yours. It’s cuter. I’ve always wanted to do that.’’

He was rewarded with an eye roll and a very slight blush.

“Seriously? All I needed to do was this? I spent all this time pining for that?”

“Rich, you have got to stop asking for advice from me, I just told you how fucked up I am”

Richie was laughing now. “I think i'm fucked up too dude. I remembered I was gay like two days ago in a cab and threw up.”

“Oh shit dude. You are such a keeper”

And then Eddie’s bandaged hands were scrunching up the front of his shirt, and Richie opened his mouth to complain - and Eddie tugged him in until their lips met. 

Richie came in at a weird angle, and his neck hurt as he ducked to reach Eddie’s mouth, and their teeth almost clacked together, and he could somehow hear Eddie trying to complain _during_ the kiss.

It was the best kiss he’d ever had in his life.

Eddie finally pulled back, and Richie only whined a little. 

‘‘Ugh, you are so annoying! I bet you haven’t even brushed your teeth since last night.’‘ Eddie made a great show of wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, but it didn’t hide the blush on his cheeks. 

‘‘That was nice.’‘ He said so softly Richie almost didn’t catch it.

‘‘Yeah.’‘ Richie was pretty sure he was grinning like an idiot now. ‘‘Real nice.’‘

Somehow an hour passed like nothing, and then Mike knocked his knuckles lightly on the door. Richie saw his eyes go to wear Richie and Eddie where holding hands, and time stood still. And then Mike just gave a small, fond smile at the both of them. 

‘‘Bill bribed the doctor with a signed copy of his book, and he told us you’re getting released tonight. Drinks to celebrate at the Inn.’‘

Richie nodded, his mind already working ahead to how he was meant to fly out and finish a tour and Oh God, he was going to have to write his own jokes. He didn’t want to tell another girlfriend joke until the day he died.

‘‘And guys -“ Mike was wearing the same fond smile as he ducked out the door again, pulling it closed behind him. ‘‘Real happy for you both.”

Richie sat in the silence, playing with Eddie’s hand, and realized for the first time in 48 hours he wasn’t feeling sick. Not even a little bit. He could feel his face doing the Dumb Smile again, but at least he knew Eddie was wearing the same one. Richie wanted to kiss it right off his face.

Eddie saw him staring and squinted at him. “One last thing. Were you the one who wrote R+E on the kissing bridge?”

Richie closed his eyes for a long second, and then opened them again. This was going to be impossible to live down.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one go while listening to Hozier, so, you know. Sorry for Stan still being dead (I know, some crimes can never be forgiven)


End file.
